E-scooters are here to stay and are expanding in Jacksonville

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — E-scooters will now be a permanent fixture in downtown Jacksonville after city leaders say they help drive up the city’s economic development. The city says soon Jacksonville will have up to 400 scooter units on a regular basis.

“Using scooters is cost-effective and an eco-friendly way to get around, it’s been a huge hit in downtowns across the country,” says Mayor Curry.

As of today, Jacksonville’s eco-friendly and electronic minibikes, “e-scooters” are a permanent installation not just in the Jacksonville downtown area but also in our urban core neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, the Southbank, and sports and entertainment districts.

“Between March 2021 and August 2022, we saw almost 150,000 rides across all vendors,” says Mayor Curry.

Mayor Curry says those rides benefit customers, visitors and business owners.

The scooters came to Jax in 2021 but officials quickly restricted when and where people could ride them. In the summer of 2021, Action News Jax told you how there were some people who were mistreating the “e-scooters” when videos surfaced on social media sites showing “e-scooters” being thrown into the St. Johns River.

That was when “e-scooters” used to be operable 24 hours a day. Now it’s from 5 a.m. to midnight.

City Council President Terrance Freeman says there will be further upgrades to “e-scooters” which include updated legislation to make “e-scooters” safer and more enjoyable.

“To prevent early morning complaints, we have changed the hours of operation to 5 a.m. to midnight, placed limits on the speed of the scooters when on the sidewalk or rideaway, increased the number of corrals throughout the urban core and lastly we are increasing the fee to permit these vehicles,” says Freeman.

At this time, it costs $1 to get the “e-scooter started and 49 cents per minute to use it.

Downtown Investment Authorities’ Chief Executive Officer Lori Boyer says the city has recently added a payment app for on-street parking. Adding that the cost of this venture was made possible during the pilot phase of “e-scooters.”

Boyer says that’s when the DIA took a look at the administrative cost which led to legislation that City Council President Terrance Freeman sponsored. That legislation restricted the number of vendors and reduced the registration fee for the vendor which covers the city’s cost of administrative responsibilities according to Boyer.

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